ITU, or International Telecommunications Unit, published yesterday an interesting report on the global state of telecommunications technologies. According to them, by the end of the year 40% of the world's population will use the Internet, the price of mobile connections is lower than that of fixed connections, almost the entire planet is covered by mobile networks, fixed/mobile Internet speeds continue to increase and of course that the operators' revenues per customer decreased constantly.
- 250 million additional people came online in 2012
- The Republic of Korea tops the ICT ranking for the 3rd year in a row
- By end 2013 40% of the world will be online – but 1.1 billion households – or 4.4 billion people – remain unconnected
- Mobile broadband is now more affordable than fixed broadband
- Almost the whole world is now within reach of mobile cellular service
- 30% of the world's young population are 'digital natives'
- Broadband is getting faster; 2Mbps now most popular basic package
- Telco operator CAPEX peaked in 2008; despite economic upturn investment levels have not returned
Practically the whole world is slowly but surely moving towards digitalization, and the coverage of more areas with mobile phone networks means nothing more than the expansion of Internet coverage. The number of users of mobile data networks has grown constantly in recent years, the speeds have increased accordingly, and things will improve radically in the coming years, companies looking to attract even more customers at low prices, the competition being beneficial for us, the users finals.
More details about the study find here.
